In what could be deemed a rather spectacular yet entirely to be expected government failure, Minister for Climate Darragh O’Brien informed us today that the State will only reduce its greenhouse emissions by half of its 51 per cent target by 2030.
There’s been a good deal of window-dressing around the Government’s ‘ambitious’ (deluded) targets of slashing emissions in half compared to 2018 levels. But today Mr O’Brien seemed to finally admit defeat. An exorbitantly costly defeat it will be for the Irish taxpayer – falling short of the target by such a margin now means the State will be liable to pay a fine of up to €28 billion by 2030.
“Talking about the percentage reductions, O’Brien said: “We’re probably projecting in the mid to high 20s in emission reduction until the end of the decade. It is a somewhat significant amount off that target.
“The domestic target is 51 per cent. The EU target is 48 per cent but leaving that aside, we’re right to set exacting targets,” he added.
“We know we won’t hit our 2030 [overall] targets. There are [sectoral] targets within that that we will reach.”
Those targets were set out by the Government in something called the Climate Act, 2021. It’s a piece of legislation which legally commits the Irish Government to achieving a 51% reduction in Ireland’s carbon emissions by the year 2030. The fines are actually not based on the 51% target, but on the EU’s Effort Sharing Regulation on climate change, which mandates a smaller reduction by 2030 of 42%. But even in the best case scenario, the Environmental Protection Agency had noted that Ireland would still miss that by around 13%.
The Green party, of all people, today pointed out that the bill could have fully funded the entire MetroLink, DART+ expansion, and a national light-rail network twice over. Ouch.
The Government’s climate targets, rammed through with virtually no public awareness or understanding (but widespread political support) have, for some years now, been an enormous ticking political timebomb. Back in the summer of 2024, alarm bells began ringing when a report warned that the Government was facing the prospect of being fined €8 billion for missing the targets. As it turned out, that was a conservative estimate and on the lower end of the scale.
‘BACK OF THE ENVELOPE STUFF’
“This cost of compliance issue,” O’Brien told Gript’s Ben Scallan a mere few months ago during a press conference. “There’s no formula, there’s no calculation that’s agreed. This is back of the envelope stuff,” O’Brien responded with a tone of misplaced flippancy.
Indeed, the exchange was widely perceived as dismissive, in light of the fact his own experts had warned that Ireland could be facing a potential political catastrophe costing tens of billions.
As the penny hopefully drops at last, the clip is worth watching again today, three months after it was posted:
The Green Party, which was a coalition partner when the Government signed up to such ridiculous targets, today said the Minister’s remarks today amounted to him waving a “white flag on our future.”
“To admit we are failing and then offer no plan to get back on track is a dereliction of duty,” said Ossian Smyth, the party’s climate spokesperson. I would argue right back to Mr Smyth that the dereliction of duty was actually to the Irish people when the government and the Greens agreed to such unrealistic targets.
The public know this. How do the Irish people see the Greens? Well, it’s fair to say that the Green Party and their agenda were rejected in the last general election. It was almost a total annihilation for the party. They went from being a junior coalition partner to losing all but one of 12 seats.
Only leader Roderic O’Gorman survived – albeit scraping through on the 13th count. The party’s losses were the worst since 2011 when it was left with no seats in the election, sparked by the financial crash and IMF bailout. I doubt many will give a toss what they have to say about missing those targets today, when it was a car crash they should have seen coming years ago.
The truth is that our Government, spurred on by the climate zealotry of the Greens, signed up to commitments in Europe that we simply could not keep.
It is also true that the Government itself accepted the imposition of enormous financial penalties by the EU in the situation that it failed to achieve targets, which it never, by the way, ever really understood. Nor did leadership ever demonstrate how reaching targets were ever feasible.
It was the Irish Academy of Engineering who, in April of last year, correctly said that targets relating to emissions had been accepted without estimating how much the endeavour would cost, or indeed what impact it would have on the already high prices consumers pay for their electricity.
Prices rose to 31.72c per kilowatt hour in the first six months of this year. We now pay the highest electricity prices in Europe as more households tumble into energy arrears, with many of us on full-time salaries just unable to keep up with the sheer cost of lighting and heating our homes.
Then we have the cost of the carbon tax, which is quite frankly indefensible. People are being punished for driving their cars. They are being punished for simply living. It’s no wonder the Greens lost the room, and while they are thankfully no longer in government, the current Cabinet are still sneaky enough to keep fleecing the taxpayer under the guise of carbon taxes, all the while insisting that they are saving the planet.
As seen in the latest phase of the Dublin traffic plan this week, the penalties don’t stop with being taxed to the eyeballs, because the government has also bought into the crazed idea that Government policy should mean removing cars from the road, under the absolute delusion that people can manage on public transport alone.
They just can’t. But completing the MetroLink, the Dart Plus and Luas extensions would have been a big help in allowing people the luxury of leaving the car at home. Of course, the money we will fork out to the EU could have been spent on those big infrastructural public transport projects.
At this point, I absolutely do not blame people who say the whole climate change agenda is now about scamming money from other countries. I don’t blame Trump for his animated efforts towards “ending the new Green scam.”
Irish politicians should, at this point, consider where elite opinion and the push from powerful lobby groups have brought them: to the verge of disaster. For years, the Government has been pressured into cutting emissions faster and harder, spurred on by the political left, which of course includes a young environmentalist vote.
It needs to now consider the rest of the country. The majority. The public who are struggling under policies designed to drive the cost of home heating through the roof. Road users who are being penalised for keeping their cars on the road with out of control fuel costs. The consumers forking out to pay additional carbon levies.
And now, the working Joe who will be entirely disenchanted to see that their taxes will be handed to the EU as a climate penalty. There’s never been a better time for our politicians to get real because the emissions slash was only ever a far-flung dream and never rooted in reality.
It’s time for a climate climbdown. In the next two to three years, the Government will have a decision: proceed with the targets set out in the 2021 Climate Act, or defer those targets. Better yet, they have the option of tearing up this nonsense completely and adopting a new approach that will actually serve the long-suffering Irish people. It is likely the case that only the latter option will give politicians hope of regaining public confidence.